The Age of Odin - James Lovegrove [121]
"So you're saying -"
"What he's saying," said a loud, unfamiliar voice from the bridge, "is close, but no cigar."
It was Mrs Keener, and she was up on her feet, alive and well and looking, as might be imagined, somewhat narked.
"This coat is Barguzin sable and cost a fucking fortune," she snarled, and she wasn't speaking like a good ol' Georgia gal any more, she was speaking in waspish masculine tones. "And you've put a hole in it and the blood won't come out easily. It's ruined! Who are you anyway?"
"I'm..." was all I managed. Mrs Keener's on-the-spot resurrection had, unusually but understandably, left me at a loss for words.
"No, wait," she said. "I recall Hel telling me that one of Odin's tame monkeys was a bit smarter and feistier than the rest, and I'm guessing you're him. It's Gordon, is it? Gudgeon? Something like that. Well, I suppose I should applaud your initiative, but as Odin's trying so dismally to put into plain English, you can't fight fate. There's a time and a place for me to die, as there is for everyone. It just doesn't happen to be now and here, with me getting shot in the chest between my slightly sagging yet still remarkable breasts. Otherwise do you think I'd be so crass as to turn up at Asgard all on my own, without even so much as a CIA bodyguard to leap into the path of a bullet? Or arrow, or hammer, as the case may be? Typical human thinking. Du-u-umb. Just not realising the scale and scope of what you've stepped into."
I raised the rifle and sighted along the barrel. "I can always stick another one in you if you'd like. You might not die but I'm sure it'll hurt."
"Fire away." Mrs Keener spread her arms, making herself an even easier target. "I can take it. All it'll do is ensure your death will be even more truly horrible. I've marked you out now, mortal, you see. You've just earned yourself a position high up on my shit list, right near the top. You'll live to rue the day you ever laid eyes on me."
"I'm already rueing it, shemale," I retorted. "Now you're using your real voice, you're pretty creepy. Makes my skin crawl even looking at you."
"Whereas when I spoke like this" - she'd resumed her breathy, high-pitched Southern lilt - "you found me kinda attractive, huh? Well, ain't you just the predictable male lunkhead, thinking with those there gonads of yours. They'll be the first things to go when the time comes, by the way. I'm looking forward to having you in my clutches and separating you from them slowly using just my little old fingernails. Wouldn't that be just dandy?"
"It'll be a bigger job than you think."
"You are just the cutest! Takes some kinda guy to boast about the size of his parts when he's being threatened with emasculation." Her smile, false as it was, tightened into a purse-lipped sneer. "I ain't just whistling Dixie here, mister. You shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that. What I say I'm gonna do, I do."
"Still got this rifle, sunshine," I said. "Smack dab between the eyes, and you'll have the mother of all headaches to deal with."
She glared at me through those footballer's wife sunglasses. You couldn't see her eyes but you could sense the fury in them. I'd goaded her good and proper. How to win friends and influence people, the Gid Coxall way.
"Well. That's plenty enough of that," she said. One of the limo's rear doors sprang open, seemingly of its own accord. Mrs Keener bent to climb in. "It's war from here on in. Y'all are gonna suffer and die for what you did to me. The centuries I spent in that cavern, my eyes sizzling and burning and growing back only to sizzle and burn some